Speech is a highly encoded acoustic signal that is related in an extremely complex manner to the perceived phonetic segments of the language, that is, the consonants and vowels that we hear when we listen to speech. A critical issue in the investigation of speech perception is the description of the mechanisms by which the information in the speech signal is analyzed in order to arrive at the identity of these perceived phones. It is the overall objective of this project to describe in detail certain tuning and operating characteristics of these analysis systems. Specifically, the research is designed to examine first, the tuning functions of these channels; second, the degree to which particular channels are sensitive to context; and third, how the operation of these systems is affected by changes in suprasegmental variables such as speaking rate.